In this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0InHucmYYEA
John Cincola talks about catching the ball then throwing it as a dinking method. He extrapolates to the full swing and it looks quite useful.
I'm going to try this as I struggle to get the old ball back over the net on occasion...
Also I've been drilling a bit and one of the things practiced is to get in a bad position and encourage folks to hit the ball hard at me. It's to simulate the defense against a smash. The practice is quite useful and I managed to get a couple back yesterday that I ordinarily would have thought a lost cause.
With this new ability, I am less fearful of a too high third shot drop. Hey, if they hit it hard, I'll get some of those back, so no big deal.
I looked a pro match, men's doubles and they hit poorish drops about 10% of the time. We rec players should probably be fairly happy with 30 or 40 percent or so. Obviously more is better, but you've got to hit some bad ones before you can hit 90% in.
I have been trying to improve my dinking which is the centerpiece of everything one does when playing against better players.
ReplyDeleteSure the dink technique matters but more importantly are footwork and tracking the ball while holding the paddle in the right spot all the time.
3rd shot is more about one time technique sure one needs to sort out the paddle the footwork and get the right hitting technique but it happens once or twice a point and when you have more time to respond.
So between 3rd shot which some says it is just longer dink I’d focus on my dink that’ll help more with my game directly as well as indirectly improve the 3rd.
Not saying that 3rc not important. Arguably 3rd has highest ripple effect ratio in the entire game. A bad 3rd kills an effective transition and put you on the back foot for rest of the game
No argument with a lot of that. Since the ball is light in weight, it requires some delicate handling and I think that's the point that Mr. Cincola was making. And you point out that the drop shot could be seen as a dink as well. I agree. Tracking and footwork are important details and Cincola has a nice video on the lunge step you might want to look at. Thanks for the comment, Rich
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